All It Takes is One Time

When my brother and I were kids, we tried to enjoy school as much as we could, despite the boredom. We would sometimes play together at recess if my friends happened to not be in school for whatever reason. Around the time I had started 2nd grade and my brother 1st, that's when the problems started. Not for me so much as him. One day, as our mom was helping us get ready for the day, he came to her crying, begging her to let him stay home. She asked him why, but he was too upset to say anything, so I went to school by myself. As I went to lunch, I decided to sit with his friends, since mine happened to not be there. They asked me why he didn't show up, but all I could tell them was that he was upset about something, I just didn't know what for. "It must've been that 2nd-grader," one of them said. I asked them what they were talking about. "We thought he was going to beat him up yesterday. You didn't see him holding him against the fence at recess?" I said that I had no idea that even happened. When I went home that day, I didn't tell him his friends told me what happened, and he didn't ask. Nothing of that caliber happened to either of us since then, and it took my brother a long time before he even told our grandpa about it. He even made one of his essays about the effects of having self-defense classes as a part of our high school's P.E. curriculum. There are times when I feel bad about not knowing that he was bullied so bad that he was afraid to go to school, but then I remember that it only took one time to change him into what he is now.

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